

MALLORY PRIZE ESSAY. 



THE ADVISABILITY OF REPEALING THE FIF¬ 
TEENTH AMENDMENT OF THE 
CONSTITUTION OF THE 
UNITED STATES. 


BY 

OTIS BEALL KENT, LL B., LL M., 

Georgetown Law School. 


GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY. 

Washington, D. G., 

1908. 








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By tr*nEf<'»' 
DlC a 1908 




EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF 
SENATOR STEPHEN A. MALLORY. 


‘ ‘ Of the moneys belonging to my estate that shall come into the 
hands of my said executor, I give and bequeath to Georgetown 
University, of the District of Columbia, the sum of two thousand 
dollars, to be paid to the President of said University, to be invested 
by him, the annual income wherefrom, or so much thereof as shall be 
necessary, I desire to be devoted to providing a gold medal to be 
bestowed annually on such student of any of the schools or depart¬ 
ments of said University (under such ru,les and regulations as the 
F'aculty of the University may prescribe),' who, in a contest, in which 
two or more students participate,^shall compose and hand in the most 
meritorious original essay on any question arising out of or relating to 
the Constitution of the United States, or arising out of or relating to 
any Republican System of Government. That said President shall 
prescribe the question that shall be the subject of each annual contest, 
and at least five hundred copies of the prize essay shall be published 
in pamphlet form within three months after the medal has been awarded, 
said pamphlet copies to be distributed in the discretion of said Pres¬ 
ident.” 

















THE ADVISABILITY OF REPEALING THE FIFTEENTH 
AMENDMENT OF THE CONSTITUTION 
OF THE UNITED STATES. 


Part I. 

Introduction .—It is an axiom of metaphysics that no chain is 
stronger than its weakest link, and on that link mayhap devolves the 
safety of the anchored craft. Thus a single link, even the tiniest 
swivel in the anchor chain that holds the Ship of State must, if 
unstable, jeopardize her destined voyage, aye, her very existence. If 
such a link there be, it should forthwith be plucked away, and in its 
stead there should be clasped a loop so welded in the forge of Justice 
as to augment the tensile strength of all its weaker fellows. 

A latent flaw in the foundation, insignificant in itself, may under¬ 
mine the superstructure and cause it to fall as did the house that was 
builded upon the sand. 

The Constitution of the United States is the basic principle from 
which the Union was evolved, and if, in the least particular, it is 
imperfect; if the argus-eye of Anarchy can divine therein a vulnerable 
defect, the supremacy of the nation is tottering above the vortex of 
destruction, and unless the breach is remedied her decline is inevitable. 

Prompted by this conviction, I would that my desire so strongly 
sensed might rouse to cogent thought some master mind, supereminent 
alike to the pusillanimity of race hatred and the unreasoning malevo¬ 
lence of party prejudice, to the end that he might, “with malice towards 
none” but inspired by the summum bonum of his country, read the 
Fifteenth Amendment in the cool light of reason, pronounce its fiat, and 
allay forever the dark incertitude of forty years. 

Determination as to the expediency of repealing any law involves 
consideration of these premises : 

1. Was the statute in its inception violative of the assumed organic 
law of its creation ? 

2. Have the conditions precedent to its enactment so materially 
changed as to render its further continuity unwarranted? 

3. Has the law subserved the purposes for which it was designed ? 

4. If not, has the futility of their accomplishment through the in¬ 
strumentality of the law become manifest ? 

If these propositions, when applied to the Fifteenth Amendment, 
are resolvable in the negative, the mere existence of the law is its own 



4 


vindication ; but if the affirmative of any one or all of them is directly 
proved, there is no alternative consistent with the general welfare : the 
law must be repealed. 

Part II. 

Y The Constitutionality of the Fifteenth Amendment .—The Amend¬ 
ments of the Constitution of the United States, like all substantive 
statutes predicated thereupon, derive their validity and potency from 
the Constitution itself, and their interpretation is governed by the ordi¬ 
nary rules applicable to the construction of Federal statutes. There¬ 
fore the legality of an Amendment depends upon : 

1. Whether it arises from the exercise of powers expressly or im¬ 
pliedly delegated to Congress or whether it is comprehended within the 
Constitutional inhibitions upon the Federal Government; and 

2. Whether it has been passed in accordance with the Constitu¬ 
tional provisions for its enactment or in derogation thereof. 

And first as to its justification. Article I, Section 2, of the Consti¬ 
tution provides that: 

“The House of Representatives (of the United States) 
shall be composed of members chosen every second year by 
the people of the several States, and the electors in each State 
shall have the qualifications requisite for electors of the most 
numerous branch of the State legislature.” 

The intendment of this Article is unmistakable, and its terms need 
no amplification. The Section specifically mentions the “most 
numerous ” house, thereby referring to the popular branch of the State 
Governments. It was the rational assumption that the members of 
such bodies should be elected in accordance with the procedure deter¬ 
mined upon by their constituents. Surely Congress would not 
arrogate to itself the power of coercing their selection. Yet, in the 
face of the provision that the electors of representatives shall be identi¬ 
cal with the electors of such State legislators, Congress boldly stalks 
across State lines and assumes to say who shall and who shall not 
enjoy a privilege vouchsafed by the Constitution. If Congress had the 
power to prescribe the qualifications of the electors of representatives, 
pari passu, its authority extends to the control of State elections, a 
suggestion so preposterous as to require no further comment. 

The purport of the Constitution is further manifested by Article 
II , Section i, which provides that : 

“ Each State shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature 
thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole 
number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may 
be entitled in the Congress. * * * * ” 


5 


Here again the intent is evident that the States should be the 
arbiters of elective functions within their boundaries. The very ter¬ 
minology, “in such a manner as the legislatures thereof MAY direct,” 
clearly implies that the question was to be ultra vires of Congress. 

The Tenth Amendment of the Constitution declares that: 

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the 
Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to 
the States respectively, or to the people.” 

This is a direct limitation upon the powers of Congress. The 
restriction has been described by the Supreme Court of the United States 
in the case of Sturgis vs. Crowninshield, 4 Wheat, 122, as follows : 

“The powers proceed not from the people of America, but 
from the people of the several States, and remain what they were 
before the adoption of the Constitution except so far as they may 
be abridged by that instrument” 

And in the case of Huber vs. Riley, 53 Pa. St Rep., 112, it was 
said: 

“The power to regulate suffrage belongs exclusively to the 
State, with which Congress cannot interfere.” 

James Madison asserted that: 

“The right of suffrage is certainly one of the fundamental 
articles of republican government, and ought not to be left to be 
regulated by the legislature ” (of the United States). 

And it was one of the planks in Grant’s presidential platform that: 

‘ ‘ The question of suffrage in all the loyal States properly 
belongs to the people of those States.” 

If this right was admitted to one State, it could not be denied to 
the others, and the question of their respective loyalty was immaterial. 

The only Constitutional warrant for the adoption of the Fifteenth 
Amendment that has ever been adduced by the votaries of equal suf¬ 
frage is contained in Article I, Section 4, of the Constitution : 

“The times, places and 77 ianner of holding elections for 
Senators and Representatives shall be prescribed in each State 
by the legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time 
by law make or alter such regulations, except as to the places 
of choosing Senators. ” 

In point of fact, the first clause of this section is cumulative 
evidence to show that the passage of the Fifteenth Amendment was an 


6 


iniquitous invasion of the States’ rights, and the gossamer web of 
justification spun from this section is suspended from the most specious 
reasoning. It first alludes to the ‘ ‘ iimes^ places and man7ier of holding 
electionsf and the next moment empowers Congress to regulate all 
these incidents with the exception of the ''places'' of choosing Sen¬ 
ators. In other words, by the simplest process of deduction, it is 
evident that Congress is vested'with the power to control the " thnes 
and^nanner" of holding elections, but it is plainly apparent that the 
most ample latitude of implication will not extend this power of Con¬ 
gress to the prescription of electoral qualifications. 

It is clearly manifest that the framers of the Constitution intended 
that the qualifications of electors should be left to the determination of 
the people of the several States, and it is absurd to imagine that in 
subscribing to the Constitution those States contemplated the renuncia¬ 
tion of their inherent right to dictate their domestic policy. They would 
have regarded an attempt on the part of the National Government to 
interfere in the establishment of their respective legislatures as an un¬ 
warranted usurpation of their natural prerogative ; a flagrant increment 
of tyranny incompatible with their God-given heritage of the right to 
“life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” 

It must follow that the Federal Government transcended its 
authority in attempting to enact the Fifteenth Amendment, and its 
resultant act is void. 

The founders of the Government, when they indited its constating 
instrument, realized that the mutations of conditions necessarily incident 
upon the efflux of time would require changes in its provisions. They 
therefore suggested in Article V of the Constitution the means and 
manner of its amendment: 

“The Congress, whenever two-thirds of both houses shall 
deem it necessary, shall propose amendments to this Constitution 
or on the application of the legislatures of two-thirds of the 
several States shall call a convention for proposing amendments, 
which in either case shall be valid to all intents and purposes as 
part of this Constitution when ratified by the legislatures of 
three-fourths of the several States or by conventions in three- 
fourths thereof^ as the one or the other mode of ratification may 
be proposed by the Congress; Provided that ’*'***»♦ 
no State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal 
suflrage in the Senate.” 

It will be seen from this that the prerequisites to the legality of an 
Amendment are: 

I. A two-thirds vote of both houses of Congress, or the application 
of two-thirds of the legislatures of the several States; and 


7 


2. Ratification by three-fourths of all the States, either through 
their several legislatures or by constitutional conventions assembled for 
that purpose. 

Necessarily, non-compliance with either of these conditions vitiates 
the attempted legislation. A brief animadversion on the history of the 
Fifteenth Amendment will demonstrate that it is void in its incipiency. 

Its conception was a joint resolution introduced in Congress 
December 7, 1868. From that date until February 27, 1869, when the 
measure was finally reported back to Congress in its modified form, the 
subject was like an intermittent spring of discord; its herald was on all 
occasions the signal for renewed outbursts of invective and malignity. 
The Congressional Globe, the precursor of the Congressional Record, 
covering the period involved in this debate, recounts the more or less 
forensic but invariably vituperative declamations pro and con the pro¬ 
posed Amendment. 

A strenuous effort was made to have the Article extend the right 
of suffrage to women and some of the most virulent arguments were 
fometed by the endeavor of certain of its proponents to grant with the 
elective franchise the concomitant right to hold office. The somewhat 
sophistical reasoning, however, that the right to vote would bear in its 
wake official incumbency ultimately prevailed, and as a compromise, 
the Amendment in its present phraseology was submitted to both houses 
of Congress: 

Article XV.—Section i. — “The right of citizens of the 
United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the 
United States or by any State on account of race, color or pre¬ 
vious condition of servitude. 

Section 2. — “Congress shall have power to enforce this 
Article by appropriate legislation.” 

This Article passed the House of Representatives according to the 
law as expressed in Article V of the Constitution, but in the Senate, the 
personnel of which, at the time, comprised sixty-six members, it was 
carried by a vote of thirty-nine to thirtee^r^ fourteen of the mernbers 
being absent. In that ratio lies the deficiency that renders nugatory 
the whole transaction. The requirement of the Article last cited, as to 
the necessity for a two-third vote of both houses, is mandatory ; the 
discretion of Congress is excluded by an affirmative enactment. Thef J 
States themselves could waive this obligation only by a formal Amend¬ 
ment to the Constitution, supplementing Article V. And, having no 
power to authorize the adoption of the Amendment by a less than two- 
thirds vote of both houses of Congress, the Article 'so enacted was 
incapable of ratification. The essayed approval of the States was 
therefore a nullity, and the act is for that reason, if for no other, un¬ 
constitutional and void, 


8 


Again, the Fifteenth Amendment is superimposed upon the 
Thirteenth and Fourteenth, and their nullification leaves an hiatus be- ^ 
tween the Twelfth and the Fifteenth Amendments, so that the latter 
must fall with its antecedents. As a matter of law, both the Thirteenth 
and the Fourteenth Amendments are unconstitutional, as is shown by 
reviewing the conditions of their adoption. 

The South contended that sovereign States which had voluntarily 
entered the Union for certain purposes and objects clearly defined could 
withdraw therefrom when the benefits to be derived from the alliance 
were countervailed by the disadvantages accruing from the federation ; 
the North traversed that contention. The controversy was referred to 
the arbitrament of war, and the award sustained the indissolubility of 
the Union. This should have incontrovertibly established the status of 
the vSouthern States as integral parts of the Union. Yet, at the time of 
the adoption of the Thirteenth Amendment, their representatives to 
Congress were excluded on the ground that they were rebels beyond 
the pale of the United States. In other words, they occupied the 
anomalous position of being both within the Union and out of it at the- 
same time. The proof of time would seem to indicate, however, that 
they were constituent parts of the United States, and as such they were 
entitled, under Article V, to their ‘‘equal suffrage in the Senate.” As 
their delegates to Congress were repudiated, the Federal Government ’ 
thereby denied to them a Constitutional right. 

When the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted the Union con¬ 
sisted of thirty-three States. It should, therefore, have been ratified 
by three-fourths of that number, or twenty-five States. As a matter of 
fact, only twenty-two of these States were allowed even to vote on the 
question at all. This amendment, therefore, is irregular, and a similar 
cloud enshrouds the validity of the Fourteenth Amendment, which 
was carried by a vote of 27,913 to 26,597, about thirteen hundred in a 
total vote of more than fifty-four thousand. 

It may be contended that the other States, by their subsequent 
ratification, thereby sanctioned these amendments, but it is an elemental 
principle of law that duress precludes consensual agreement and vitiates 
the sequent contract. The recalcitrant States were advised in unequiv¬ 
ocal terms that their restoration to the Union was contingent upon 
unqualified adoption of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments. 
Furthermore, history concedes that the legislatures of the Southern 
States were then so dominated by the Federal minions of the recon¬ 
struction regime that the ratification of these amendments cannot be 
ascribed to the people of the Southern States, and there is not the 
slightest doubt that, had their individual sentiments been consulted, 
the South, to a man, would have rejected both amendments in their 
entirety. 


9 


The irregularities in its enactment, coupled with its dependence 
upon the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, both in point of law 
defective, conspire to render the Fifteenth Amendment unconstitutional 
and void ab initio, and the necessity for its repeal should be obviated 
by a judicial decree to that effect. But the courts, predisposed to let 
sleeping dogs lie,” have evaded the issue of its constitutionality. It is 
undoubtedly within the province of the judicial function to invalidate 
the law, but since judges are content to rest supinely upon their pre¬ 
rogative, there is no other recourse, and the Fifteenth Amendment 
should be repealed. 

This brings the discussion of this question, in its logical order to 
Part III. 

A comparison between present conditions and those immediately pre~ 
ceding the enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment. 

The reverberations from the opening shot on Sumter awoke the 
Southland, basking in the sunshine of prosperity, from her lethargic 
and contented quiescence. Fler sons were metamorphosed from gentle¬ 
men farmers into gentlemen soldiers and they who had been inured to 
sybaritic indulgence, in loyal abnegation, assumed their stations in the 
serried lines, resolved to do or die. 

The salient incidents of the strife that followed; the matchless 
courage evinced by the combatants of both armies ; the marvelous 
strategic genius exhibited by their commanders; and the chivalrous 
instinct that insistently reminded the contestants of the unity of their 
origin, illumine the pages of history, and a recapitulation of them here 
is supererogatory. Suffice it to say that when the final curtain was rung 
down upon the drama of internecine carnage, the South lay prone at 
the feet of her equally valiant but more numerous adversary, 
vanquished in all save her insuperable spirit. 

Excluding the whilom value of her slaves set free, she had lost, in 
the five years of the war, nearly three thousand millions of dollars and 
was indebted to the merchants of the North, on account of goods and 
money received, in an additional sum of four hundred and eight million 
dollars. Her total indebtedness exceeded, by nearly fourteen million 
dollars, the assessed valuation of all the property in the Confederate 
States in 1865, and was more than two million dollars greater than the 
national debt at its maximum limit. 

Her erstwhile fecund fields brought forth prolific harvests of tares ; 
her garnered resources had been despoiled by ruthless devastation ; her 
disbanded troops, unkempt, hungry and hardened by the toils of war, 
were no longer conversant with the arts of peace, and their necessity 
was piteous. Her pelucid streams that had in the heyday of her 


lO 


splendor run their rippling careers in dulcet cadenzas, obligatos to the 
drowsy singing of meadow insects, had been transmogrified into turgid 
sewers bearing upon their crimson tide the hapless sacrifices to the god 
of war. Their sedges still reeked with the crumbling flotsam of battle. 
The predominant color scheme on her resplendent canvas had changed 
from green and gold to red and black. Athwart her sunny skies there 
arose a cloud, sinister, inscrutable, ominous. The night came on, more 
tenebrous even that the darkness of war, and the star of hope was 
obscured by that ever-enhancing blackness. And then when it seemed 
that the dreadful storm must descend like a veritable scourge of terror, 
her resourcefulness asserted itself, and, pursuant to the first law of 
nature, or perhaps goaded by the necessity that knows no law, she in¬ 
stituted that inexorable contrivance of intimidation, the Ku Klux Klan. 
Its only justification lies in the exigency that fathered it, and an attempt 
at the palliation of its misdeeds is not germane to this subject, except 
in the connection in which allusion is made to it, to establish a cause 
upon which to predicate its results—the Reconstruction Acts. 

On March 2, 1867, Congress passed the first of these Acts “to 
provide for the more efficient governing of the rebel States. ” The South 
was divided into five military districts, over each of which an army 
officer was placed in command, thus subjecting the affected area to the 
rigors of martial law. Congress maintained its right to assume this 
attitude on account of the alleged outrages perpetrated by the Ku 
Klux Klan upon the recently adopted “wards of the nation,” as well 
as upon those members of the various communities in the South con¬ 
temptuously yclept by the denizens, “carpet-baggers.” That there 
was ample foundation for these reports there is no doubt. But that 
there was likewise provocation for the attacks justice must admit. 

The President vetoed the bill providing for reconstruction on the 
assigned reason that its patent object was to compel the people of the 
South to adopt principles and measures to which it was known they 
were opposed. He further declared that the movement was “in pal¬ 
pable conflict with the plainest provisions of the Constitution. It was 
impossible, however, to have this question judicially determined, as is 
shown by the case of one McCardle who had been punished for some 
alleged offense by the military tribunal of Mississippi. He submitted 
the matter to the court, but before a decision could be rendered Con¬ 
gress, over the President’s veto, passed an act depriving the judiciary 
of jurisdiction in such cases, and the controversy was never decided. 
This was followed by another Reconstruction Act to the same import 
and equally as drastic. 

When the Thirteenth Amendment was adopted the negro popula¬ 
tion of the United States numbered five million, and of this number 
four and one-half million had but shortly before been slaves. With 


this vast horde of creatures, childish in their simplicity, just ushered 
into a new world, with exaggerated notions of their own status and 
prospects, and with no formulated idea of the purposes of freedom, 
literally “turned loose” upon the country. Congress wisely appre¬ 
ciated the fact that some provision would have to be made for them. 
This arrangement, whatsoever its nature, would affect the South alone, 
and as they regarded the Southern States as conquered provinces, the 
addition of insult to their already irreparable injury would be, at most, 
a pleasing experiment. Imbued with this belief, in the best of good 
faith, perhaps. Congress passed successively the Thirteenth, Fourteenth 
and Fifteenth Amendments of the Constitution of the United States. 

But what is the situation to-day? The South has nobly responded 
to the demands upon her latent resources, and with the development 
of commercial intercourse lines of sectional demarcation have been 
obliterated. 

Her rivulets have been purged of the dank vestige of carnage and 
their channels have been deepened by the self-same Congress that in 
days agone adopted measures in utter disregard to her behests, and once 
more they are blending their melody with the lilting symphony of the 
katydids, as the)^ bear upon their bosoms the hulks of commerce and 
drive the whirring wheels of progress. The lurid pigments on her 
picture have resumed their wonted hue a nd the gorgeous green of 
Spring-time hides the blackened ruins from view. 

The South emerged from her ordeal of battle with added lustre. 
Her sons to-day, if anything, outvie their Northern brothers in loyalty 
to the flag, *as is demonstrated by the avidity with which the 
Southern recruits enlisted to adjust our recent difficulty with Spain. 
The unification of the country is an actuality. 

Yet that menacing black cloud has grown from a somber mist 
above the horizon of the South until it now lowers above the meridian, 
and its shadow overspreads the nation. Unless it is dissipated it will 
some day descend like an avalanche, wreaking in its course the pent up 
fury of generations of savage perfidy. Then annihilation on its progeny 
will inevitably result and the horrors of past conflicts will pale into insig¬ 
nificance. The paternal government will eventually stumble upon the 
realization that its ward has converted its sustenance into an awful 
power that will be directed, in unfilial frenzy, against his benefactor. 
It has created a foe unworthy of its steel; a foe created but to be 
destroyed. 

The situation is critical and will brook no delay. The only solu¬ 
tion lies in checking the encroachments of the Nego Dynasty, and even 
assuming that the adoption of the Fifteenth Amendment was justified 
at the time of its enactment, conditions have so changed as to unify the 



12 


country, and to array the North and South, in common interest, against 
the black peril. The Fifteenth Amendment must be repealed. 


Part IV. 


Has ihe Law subserved the purposes for which it was designed ? 

This naturally leads to the further question as to what those pur¬ 
poses were. And here arises the necessity for differentiating between 
it and the ostensible objects of the Fifteenth Amendment. 



^ The agitation had its origin in a pretense of magnanimity and 
brotherly love ; a laudable aspiration to add to the crowning glory of 
freedom a still more glorious diadem—the elective franchise. Had the 
prime mentors of the movement been, in truth, actuated by this endeavor 
it would have indicated a splendid advance in the progress of altruism, 
but the esoteric development of the scheme does not sustain this view 
of the case. 

Indubitably the underlying incentive to the proposition was dual 
in its nature : 

1. An inclination to visit upon the Southern States the maximum 
penalty for their contumacy ; and 

2. To insure the perpetuity of Republican ascendancy. 

The project, from the first, assumed the aspect of a party measure. 
One of its most bitter opponents (Mr. Eldridge) asserted disdainfully 
that: 

“Party needs must be accomplished and party purposes 
must be carried out, even though they should revolutionize the 
Government, overthrow the Constitution and destroy the 
Republic. * * * This measure most certainly originated in 

hostility to the States and menaces their existence ! ” 

Mr. Hamilton, too, declared that: 

“It was an unwarranted transposition of power—a pre¬ 
meditated engine for the destruction of the State Governments.” 

Thaddeus Stevens, a cripple, bowed neath the burden of years, but 
endowed by the law of compensation with a peculiarly brilliant and 
perspicuous intellect, espoused the cause of the negro with the full 
quantum of his unremitting zeal. It was his firm belief that with 
citizenship guaranteed to the negro, the South would soon extend to 
him the right of suffrage in order to secure the increased representation 
that would ensue. 

When he came to appreciate the true attitude of the Southern 
States towards the negro; their indisposition to arm him with so dan¬ 
gerous a weapon of offence as the ballot, he resolved that they should 


13 


be crushed into submission to his views. In a speech delivered by him 
on December 14, 1865, he said: 


“In my judgment, they (the insurrectionary States) 
ought never to be recognized as capable of being counted as 
valid States until the Constitution shall have been so amended 
as to make it what its makers intended, and so as to secure 
the ascendancy of the party of the Union” (/ e.) the Republican 
party. 


That this was the unanimous sentiment is evidenced by the public 
utterances of the members of Congress in urging the adoption of the 
Amendment One of them, in a paroxysm of confidential exuberance 
on one occasion, asserted that its enactment “would secure to the party 
a hundred and fifty thousand voters, ” and he then asked “ if the serv¬ 
ices of these men were to be declined.” 

The Northern States singularly advocated the right of the negro in 
the South to vote, but seemed to regard such a course at their own elec¬ 
tions impolitic. Thus, in New York, at various times, prior to and 
including the year 1868, a vote on equal suffrage was overwhelmingly 
defeated. 

Massachusetts, it is true, allowed the negro to vote, provided he 
was qualified by sufficient intelligence, but out of a population of a 
million and a quarter she had only ten thousand “persons of color”— 
twenty-six hundred blacks against three hundred and forty thousand 
white voters. 

The percentage of the races in the South was one negro male adult 
to every two white voters ; the ratio in the North was eighty-four 
whites to one negro. 

The Great West, while rejecting the institution of slavery, did not 
welcome free negroes and excluded them by statute from participation 
in civil affairs. Oregon went so far as to forbid them to enter the 
State. 

The word “white,” as descriptive of electors, was contained in 
the constitutions of the States save six, five of which were in New 
England, the sixth being her offspring—Kansas. 

Recent Republican writers have not hesitated to admit that the 
purposes of the Reconstruction Acts were political and partisan ; that 
reconstruction was resorted to in order to preserve the supremacy of 
the Republican party after the Southern States should have been 
readmitted to their representation in Congress. 

And indeed no one to-day can gainsay the truth of Mr. Wilson’s 
statement on the floor of the Senate on March 15, 1867, as voicing the 
sentiments of the party leaders: 


14 


“With the exercise of practical judgment ; with good 
organization scattering the great truth and the facts before the 
people, a majority of the States will within a twelve-month 
send us Senators and Representatives who think as we think, 
speak as we speak, and vote as we vote, and will give their 
electoral votes for whomsoever we nominate as President in 
1868.” 

The plan of Thaddeus Stevens amounted, in effect to the enfrachise- 
ment of the negro and the disfranchisement of the white citizen, and 
had he lived, his ambition would probably have been accomplished, 
for a time at least, but death curtailed his pernicious activities, and 
in the colored cemetery where he was buried at his own request, requie- 
scat in pace. 

The Republicans never lost an opportunity to remind the negro 
that he should be grateful to them for his freedom and that he should 
show his appreciation by voting as they directed, and this he invaria¬ 
bly did. 

The Union League was an organization promoted among the 
negroes for the furtherance of party interests. The oath of initia¬ 
tion into the order was administered at night, so as to bind the super¬ 
stitious consciences of its members, “in the presence of God and three 
witnesses,” wherein they swore that: 

“They would vote only for and for none but those who 
advocated and supported the principles set forth by the League 
to fill any office of power, profit or trust, under either the State 
or General Governments.” 

Therefore, plainly stated, it would seem that the Fifteenth Amend¬ 
ment was enacted in order to secure to the Republican party one hun¬ 
dred and fifty thousand negro votes. Plas this object been consummat¬ 
ed? A fitting answer is presented in a news item culled from a current 
issue which announces the fact that the National Negro American 
Political League (a lineal descendant of the Union League of recon¬ 
struction days) has pledged its membership of more than eight hun¬ 
dred thousand negro voters to combine their efforts to defeat the Re¬ 
publican candidate for President at the November election of 1908. 

Thus, the real object of the Fifteenth Amendment has, after 
thirty-eight years of practical success, proved unavailing. The suc- 
f the pretended object will be treated in 

Part V. 

Has time demonstrated the futility of the Fifteenth Amendmentf 

From the political standpoint, assuredly, the Republican party, 
in its overzealousness, has laid a snare for its own entanglement—“it is 
foist on its own petard.” 



15 


The negro league mentioned supra represents practically all the 
negro voters in the United States, inasmuch as they are a race accus¬ 
tomed to follow any leader whom disgruntled prejudice elects, and 
the negro voters who are not actually affiliated with the organization 
will cast their ballots according to its direction. Hence the safety 
of the ascendant party, as well as the prosperity and perhaps the life 
of the nation, depend upon the suppression of the black vote. 

Now as to the vaunted object of the Fifteenth Amendment being 
for the betterment of the negro race. The utter hopelessness of such 
a proposition is apparent from a glance at the negro’s past development. 

Irrespective of his origin, whether in the primordial curse of God 
or in the process of evolution from organic protoplasm, certain it is 
that he emerged from the labarynthine mists of the pre-Christian 
era, an abject and unregenerate creature. His image is ubiquitous 
in the archeological portrayals of the scences of four thousand years 
ago, and he is always depicted as “a hewer of wood and a drawer of 
water.” Other people have flourished and declined. The Aryan race 
has advanced steadfastly through the colonnades of time and the 
resistless tread of their footsteps has resounded through the corridors 
of eternity, ever echoing their watch-word “progress.” But the negro 
has never even straggled in the rear of this august procession. 

In his indi ginous state, he has no history save the bare recital 
of savagery and barbarity struggling with the elements for his 
existence; a narrative of benightment; a story of degeneracy; a record 
of stultification and abasement. His annals of war recount no nobler 
heroism than the gory prowess of some naked headsman; his con¬ 
tribution to the world of art and letters consists alone in wretched 
carvings on the desert rocks. His only science is to charm the python 
and the cobra. His commerce is the traffic in human provender 
for jungle banquets. His only industry that essential to secure for 
his deglutition a daily repast of locusts and grasshoppers, supplemented 
by the succulent flora that a bounteous Nature purveys. 

His history in the United States is a fabric of slothfulness and 
vicious immorality. True, he has had to contend with the crushing 
incubus of serfdom, but if he had within him the elemental spark of 
intelligence, he should in forty years have fanned that ember into a 
sensible flicker of enlightenment. 

The United States Government has expended more money for 
his education than for that of white children, and yet to-day ninety 
per cent of the colored population of the United States have advanced 
but little beyond their primitive instincts. The great majority of 
them are born and reared in squalid hovels and the criminal records 
of the country are replete with the recountments of their progressions 


i6 


from resorts of debauchery through the police courts and into institu¬ 
tions of correction and summary punishment. 

An exhaustive research has failed to disclose a single instance 
of criminal assault by a negro prior to the emancipation proclama¬ 
tion. Since that date, especially since the adoption of the Fifteenth 
Amendment, the recurrent perpetration of this crime has become noto¬ 
rious. 

Occasionally, like a bright bubble on a polluted stream, a negro dis¬ 
tinguished from his brethren by a semblance of mentality arises above 
his level, and appears for a while the fruition of his patrons’ hopes. 
But these individuals, without an exception, owe their superiority to 
an infusion of Caucasian blood within their veins. 

The negro’s head is structurally incapable of retaining the higher 
principles of civilization. This fact is exemplified by the actual 
instance in recent years of a negro graduate of Harvard, inoculated 
with all the classic virus he could assimilate. He was sent as a 
missionary to the Congo country and never returned. After some 
time, fears were entertained for his safety and a rescue party was 
organized to ransom him. They found him in the wilds of the remote 
interior, a cannibal chief, presiding at a ghoulish orgy. 

The right to vote consistently demands the right of social equality. 
That this is impossible needs no affirmance. The fallacy of the design 
was fully realized by President Lincoln when he announced: 

‘T have no purpose to produce political and social equal¬ 
ity between the black and white races. There is a physical 
difference between the two which, in my judgment, will proba¬ 
bly forever forbid their living together upon a footing of perfect 
equality. I am not in favor of making voters or jurors of 
negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to inter¬ 
marry with white people.” 

Part VI. 

Conclusion .—The enactment of the Fifteenth Amendment presented 
the most difficult theorem the United States will ever solve—the race 
problem. 

The elective franchise is not essential to the well being of a 
people under a democratic government. The privilege is denied to 
women generally, and to the Indians, as well as to the inhabitants of 
the District of Columbia. Yet the happiness of none of these is 
seriously impaired by the abridgment of this privilege. Pity may 
plead “like angels trumpet tongued” for the negro. But is not our 
poignant sympathy aroused by the inept condition of idiots and lunatics ? 
Yet would it not be madness to enfranchise the inmates of our asylums? 


Those States which favor the negro voter might provide for him by 
statute as have those legislatures which have extended the right to 
women. 

The negro has no conception of the political responsibility of the 
elective franchise and the ballot is to him, in most cases, a species 
of legal tender, assignable to the highest bidder. As long as he is 
endowed with it, however, he will demand further concessions, and its 
enjoyment inspires him with a false hope that can never be attained. 

In conclusion, the Fifteenth Amendment is an abrogation of a 
fundamental principle and is therefore unconstitutional and void. It 
is the product of a fanatical frenzy, wholly unwarranted by the circum¬ 
stances relied upon for its defense. It has failed miserably to effectuate 
the purposes for which it was designed, and those objects shall be still 
unfulfilled when 

“ * * the sun grows cold, 

And the stars are old. 

And the leaves of the Judgment Book unfold.” 

In the imperious majesty of the Aryan race that has reigned 
unchallenged through unnumbered aeons; for the sake of the genera¬ 
tions yet unborn; to preserve unsullied the escutcheon of Old Glory; 
and that our Ship of State, cleansed of her sable barnacles and manned 
by a dauntless crew of Aryan citizens, may forge her sinuous way 
through the Scylla and Charybdis of negro domination; that she may 
safely weather the menacing tempest of doubt; and that she may 
finally cast her anchor in the placid Harbor of Content—the Fifteenth 
Amendment should be repealed! 

Respectfully submitted by 

OTIS BEALL KENT, LL. B., LL. M. 



























































































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